My family owns five acres in eastern Uttar
Pradesh, but the land would only feed us,
nothing more, and there were no jobs."
Mahant came to Delhi in 1976, slept on
the streets, and sold newspapers. Now he
works with the Gandhi Peace Foundation.
After work he travels 90 minutes by bus to
the quarry schoolhouse.
"I had never understood poverty until I
became poor myself," he said. "I began to
study the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. He
urged Brahmans to embrace Harijans and
all of India's poor. What else could I do?"
AHANT'S profound commitment is
echoed by members of Delhi's upper
crust, who believe that reform must
also come from the top down.
"In the Third World an elite is growing
that has a stake only in its own prosperity,"
says Romesh Thapar, editor of scholarly
Seminarmagazine. "In India that elite num
bers about ten million, with perhaps another
200 million who benefit. But our society
effectively bars the remaining 500 million
from real progress."
The barriers cut across some of India's
proudest accomplishments. Though univer
sities and colleges are turning out the world's
third largest pool of technically trained man
power, the Fourth All-India Educational
Survey of 1982 reported that some 75 per
cent of all students-including most girls
drop out of school by age 14. Fifteen to 18
percent of the nation's children never attend
school. An estimated 410 million Indians
cannot read or write.
Youngsters who survive secondary
school enter a world of sudden-death exami
nations in which failing a single subject
means failure in all. This has produced ana
tional epidemic of cheating and corruption.
"For most students, failing a final exam is
a failure for life. So they'll succeed by hook
or by crook-mostly by crook," according to
Dr. Shib K. Mitra, whom I met as he was
about to retire as head of the National Coun
cil of Educational Research and Training.
"We still follow educational standards
designed to produce clerks for the British
Empire. They bear little relation to rural
needs. Our students have very little aware
ness that their education is meant for nation
al development-which in India can be
achieved only through rural development.
"To me, that still seems a distant goal."
Awareness of rural stagnation is also
changing ideas about the direction of
India's green revolution. Massive irrigation
schemes and new seed varieties have raised
wheat and rice production to all-time rec
ords, creating vast wealth in northern
states. But experts point out that little has
been done to increase yields of lentils, beans,
and other legumes, which have always been
critical sources of protein for India's primar
ily vegetarian population. Neglect of oil
seeds such as sesame averages 600 million
dollars a year for imported edible oils.
For B. B. Vohra, until April 1983 chair
man of India's National Committee on En
vironmental Planning, the neglect runs far
deeper: "There has been so much emphasis
on irrigation, but now we find that it pre
sents serious problems," he told me. "Al
ready, seven million hectares [17.3 million
acres] of newly irrigated land are out of pro
duction due to poor drainage, and another
ten million hectares are threatened in the
next decade. This is a conservative estimate.
"Also, as many as 88 million hectares
are lying almost useless, without trees or
grasses. Trees have been cut, pastures
overgrazed. This has caused erosion and
flooding and prevents replenishment of the
underground water supplies on which so
much of our irrigation depends. If we don't
tackle this neglect of land resources, all oth
er problems will become academic."
India's heritage of solving problems is of
ten overshadowed by centuries of colonial
ism and conquest. Outside Delhi I visited
one of the oldest monuments to that histo
ry-a spectacular 234-foot minaret called
Qutb Minar, begun in A.D. 1199 by northern
India's first Muslim conquerors. Nearby I
found a more eloquent monument to Indian
genius. It is a 24-foot pillar of iron alloy,
smelted by Indian metallurgists with such
skill that it has remained rustless for 1,500
years (page 533).
These superb technicians were brethren
of Indian thinkers who originated the con
cepts of zero and infinity and devised the in
accurately named Arabic numeral system,
giving the science of mathematics to a world
drenched in superstitious ignorance.
T. Ranganathan is of that brotherhood.
New Delhi: Mirrorof India
527